


the little things

by TheSilverQueen



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Three Of Swords Fest, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 02:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13672215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilverQueen/pseuds/TheSilverQueen
Summary: Will dies on a Saturday. The box containing Hannibal's salvation arrives on Valentine's Day.





	the little things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wraithsonwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithsonwings/gifts).



> Wow I really suck at doing things on time. Here's a fic I probably should've spent a bit more time polishing, but deadlines called.
> 
> This work is for the [Three of Swords Fest](https://thisismydesignhannibal.tumblr.com/post/170708567481/fannibalfest-toronto-threeofswords) on tumblr. 
> 
> It is also a gift to my dear [wraithsonwings](https://wraithsonwingsposts.tumblr.com/), who inspired this entire damn thing by talking about Dancy curls and planting them. I drew further inspiration from the ending of A.I. Artificial Intelligence and the trailer for that Altered Carbon series on Netflix. I hope I did your idea justice, my dear!

Will dies on a Saturday.

It is not unexpected. Neither of them are young men, and time has ruled them with a harsh hand. Will’s face is lined with creases and wrinkles; his back is bent and stooped; his hands are mottled and pale. In the hours approaching his death, he can hardly breathe, much less speak, and his eyes are pools of hazy confusion.

Hannibal knows the second the moment Will’s spirit flees his flesh. He does not need to feel the ceasing of the pounding heart that he loves so fiercely or see the unnatural stillness of the chest he once sliced into with a linoleum knife. Hannibal has worn death’s mask for so long that he knows it as intimately as one can while still being in the living side of the veil. Only Will, with his fathomless imagination, might perhaps know it better.

Hannibal makes a thousand plans in a heartbeat. He plans a feast. He plans a cremation. He plans a slow death. He plans a swift death. A thousand and one plans, multiplying with each second, a new one to match each painful beat of his ailing heart.

For all his deliberation, though, here is one plan that he deliberately leaves alone. 

Will’s hair is ragged and limp now, a shadow of the curls that had once fascinated Hannibal and countless others. Still, there is enough left that a single snip and a half an hour’s drive could bring Hannibal relief from this aching loneliness, one so familiar and yet so strange, because he has spent so much of his life with Will now that to comprehend life without him is bewildering, even though he knows, theoretically, that he once survived long into adulthood without ever hearing Will’s name or tasting his laughter or crystallizing their moments together in the voluminous caverns of his mind palace. One single snip, and the world’s most talented scientists could recreate Will down to each and every scar he bears and pour that lovely mind with all of its delicious memories back into the cradle of flesh and blood that Hannibal knows better than his own.

One single snip.

Hannibal closes his eyes, rests his cheek against Will’s chin, and sighs.

* * *

_”But it wouldn’t be me, Hannibal. It would just be a – a test-tube baby walking around with my face.”_

_“And your memories.”_

_“And if I just gave your memories to a random body, would it be you, Hannibal? Would they be Doctor Hannibal Lecter? Would they be the Chesapeake Ripper? Would they be my husband?”_

_Silence._

_“I don’t want it, Hannibal. Please try and remember that.”_

_“As if I could ever forget anything about you.”_

_“Sap.”_

* * *

In the end, Hannibal does neither a cremation nor a feast. He combs Will’s hair, bathes his sagging skin, and dresses him in the finest clothes they still have left. Then he presses a kiss to his beloved’s face and goes outside to dig a grave. It is hard work, one that leaves Hannibal’s shoulders aching and his vision blurring, but Hannibal’s will had once given him the strength to combat near starvation in the middle of the freezing winter – it is surely enough to see him through this one final act of devotion to what is left of his tattered heart.

Well, that, and the fact that their graves were marked out long ago, and the digging process had already begun. Will had joked that they might as well start before their bones were too fragile to handle the work, and so they had ceremonially dug a few inches deeper with every passing year.

It’s a good spot. There is a tree to mark their remains, a small hill to serve as their headstone, and every morning when the sun rises, it touches this part of their land first.

It is dusk when he finishes. The moon turns their grass to liquid dancing silver and the cold air turns his breath to mist and shadow. He returns the shovel to its proper spot, kicks the last bit of dirt off of his boots, and heads inside to make himself presentable. Will’s funeral will not be well attended if one counts the number of living bodies present, by Hannibal will be damned if he attends it sweaty and stained and dirt-ridden.

* * *

_”Memory transferal? Is that even . . . possible?”_

_“I have skimmed the papers. The results seem to be successful.”_

_“When the hell did you get the chance to read all 1000 pages of this experiment? I know for a fact you spent all day prepping for that dinner with Mustache Man and Loud Lady.”_

_“Will, please desist in insulting our guests.”_

_“Your guests. I didn’t invite them. Your fellow professors are snobs.”_

_“Perhaps if you did not greet them with dog fur on your pants and engine grease on your palms?”_

_“I thought you said it was the epitome of politeness to not react to the state of someone else.”_

_“My colleagues are most certainly not the epitome of politeness on a good day, dearest Will. And you know as well as I do that I require far less sleep than you; it was no trouble at all to read through the paper, which was most assuredly not 1000 pages.”_

_“I dunno, it sounds kind of sketchy.”_

_“I am actually rather curious about – ”_

_“Hannibal, the last thing we need is someone accidentally getting the wrong memories from you. Or me. So how about no. Like, forever.”_

* * *

The days following Will’s funeral are bleak and monotone. His back and legs do not thank him in the morning after the arduous task of finishing digging the grave and lowering his dear Will inside, and he spends several days hobbling around recovering, partially relieved on an instinctual level that there is no one to see his weakness and equally upset on an instinctual level that Will is no longer there to hobble alongside him.

On the surface, he eats and bathes and exercises, but such things are so dull now. The world has lost its shine and color, and even the prospect of murder is no long appealing.

Instead, he sits in the battered old chair Will so loved and, occasionally, makes a new lure, just to remind himself it wasn’t all an illusion.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, a package arrives.

* * *

_”They say they can recreate anyone’s body now with that new cloning tech.”_

_“Interesting. And here I had thought that such a medical advance would take many more years.”_

_“Of course you already know about it. Did you have plans to clone me, Hannibal dearest?”_

_“As if any clone could ever take your place.”_

_“Tell that to Anthony Dimmond.”_

_“Do remind yourself what fate befell him.”_

_“I don’t need to. You carved me open too, remember?” A pause. “Please don’t tell me that you used that opportunity to gather genetic material for a future clone of me.”_

_“Don’t be so mundane. Why would I use that moment when I have had so many afterwards for far superior samples?”_

_Silence._

_“I swear to god if I find a clone of me hiding in the basement, I will leave you.”_

_“Why would I hide it in the – ”_

_“That is so not the point.”_

* * *

The box is small, for all that it is dwarfs their mailbox. It is plain and holds only a simple letter and a dark velvet pouch. Hannibal does not recognize the company brand on the letter’s envelope, but the second he touches it, his hands tremble.

He has lived with Will for so long that the house smells of them both, but this box smells so strongly of Will that Hannibal, for one earth-shattering moment, wonders wildly if he has finally gone crazy. Then he breaks the seal of the letter and reads the first scribbling of an all too familiar handwriting, and his heart stutters as frantically as his breath.

 _Hannibal,_ it begins simply. _Once upon a time, you asked me to protect myself from being torn to shreds by my career at Jack’s behest. I refused. Once upon a time, you asked me to run away with you. I refused. Once upon a time, you asked me to consider the question of shattered teacups and time. I refused._

_More recently, you asked me a question of cloning and memory transferal. I refused, for what fun would it be to let you have all that you desire, and because the idea of a clone walking around with my memories was truly terrifying. But now . . . now, Hannibal, I see the way you look at me when I stumble, the way you hold your breath when I cough, the way you close your eyes when I cannot do the simplest of things. And I find that the idea of you wasting away after I am gone is more terrifying than anything I could have ever contemplated. You are too stuck up, perhaps, to drive yourself into an early grave, but apathy will kill you just as sure as starvation will._

_You asked me, once, if I would ever consider a life forever with you. You meant it for this lifetime on this earth, to run away and start anew with you for however long nature would grant it. I refused, then._

_This is me recanting that._

_This is me saying I do._

_This is me saying yes, Hannibal._

There is no signature on the bottom. Hannibal does not need it. He falls upon the velvet pouch in a desperate scramble, and with shaking hands he unveils the tiniest, softest curl from within. He knows without question that it is Will’s, but it is strong, not limp and weak as it was when he was near death; Hannibal knows that this lock must have been cut years ago, when Will was still relatively hale and healthy enough to apparently run around and make secret plans for Hannibal’s salvation years down the road.

There is a one post script note. _You always said it was about the little things. Here’s one little thing. Happy Valentine’s Day._

Hannibal cradles Will’s last, most precious gift to him and feels cleaved to the core, exposed, adrift. He had never dreamed Will might change his mind, so fierce had been his opposition. And Hannibal had never for a second considered taking Will’s hair against his wishes, but to know that Will had shouted no to his face and planned this in secret behind his back is so overwhelming that he nearly drops the curls altogether.

Will is, of course, the only person who can ever surprise him so.

* * *

Will wakes up covered in slime, naked, and with the itchiest pins and needles sensation he’s ever felt. 

Hannibal is standing over his body, a bland expression on his face, but Will knows him as intimately as he’s ever known anyone. He doesn’t even need empathy for it. Hannibal is so much a part of Will now that more of the memories that have been transferred into this new Will body have Hannibal in them than the ones that don’t.

Memory transferal isn’t perfect yet, of course. Some things – the things you remember more vividly than the others – pass over better and some things don’t pass over at all.

It’s okay. Will has the important ones.

“Hey there, husband mine,” Will says, grinning like a demon. “Are you being a stalker again?”

“My dearest Will,” Hannibal replies, “stalking is rude and quite outside of my purview. I am merely waiting to welcome my husband back to the land of the living.”

“I consider myself welcomed, then.”

“Nothing so mundane as that,” Hannibal chides him.

And then they are kissing again, and it’s strange, to feel the contrast of Hannibal’s sagging skin against Will’s young, newly made skin, but it’s still perfect all the same. He’ll take Hannibal any way he can get him for as long as he can have him, and right now, that’s going to be forever.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> For the curious, I am also on [tumblr](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com) although right now it's a gluttony of SW because I'm on an Obi-Wan Kenobi kick.
> 
> For those curious about the fest, check out the rest of the works in the [Three Of Swords AO3 collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/ThreeOfSwordsFFT) or go check out [Fannibal Fest Toronto on tumblr](https://fannibalfest-toronto.tumblr.com/).


End file.
